Mystery: For centuries, it had been taken for granted that the Susquehannocks, a Native American tribe, were aggressive cannibals. They had gained their reputation from European settlers, who had often accused the Susquehannock tribe of murdering and eating their neighbouring tribes. Explanation: April Beisaw, an anthropologist at Vassar College, was convinced that the Susquehannocks had gotten this terrible reputation unfairly. Armed with this belief, Beisaw and two undergraduates studied over 2,000 artefacts from the area where the tribe had lived, along with the remains of the Shenks Ferry people. She discovered that no evidence of violence had ever occurred between the Susquehannocks and their neighbours, concluding that it was probably a myth that helped cover up the murderous activities of the European settlers themselves.
